Henry And June

Where Hearts Were 
Entertained In June

Henry & June
Directed by Phillip Kaufman
USA/France 1990
Universal
Blu Ray Zone B

Wow, it says something when I have to import a big American movie on Blu Ray from Italy because there are no UK or US versions of the film made in that format. Hollywoodland needs to catch up with what people want, I think. 

A couple of years after one of his many masterpieces, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Phillip Kaufman co-wrote and directed another movie heavily tinged with the erotic experience, namely Henry & June. I remember going to the cinema to see this one at the time with my best friend. Sadly, neither the cinema or my friend still exist but this movie does bring back some memories of both for me. 

The film was somewhat star studded, for the time, with the titular writer Henry Miller being played by Fred Ward (Remo Williams aka The Destroyer himself, ladies and gentleman) and with his somewhat challenging wife June being played by the rising star Uma Thurman. Then, of course, there’s the central character of the film, who we see everything through the eyes of, the great female erotica writer Anaïs Nin, played by the always compelling Maria de Medeiros. And she is the real star of the show here, as the movie is based on her diaries, published posthumously after the last surviving person who appears in them, her husband Hugo, had died. Hugo here is played by a young Richard E. Grant and, yeah, his fake American accent in this movie does, it has to be said, take some getting used to. And Kevin Spacey looks so young in this one. 

The film takes place in Paris in the early 1930s, starting off with a flashback to 1931 as we find Anaïs coming across a stash of pornographic photos and illustrations she finds after her husband and she have rented an apartment there. The two seconds or less shot of one drawing depicting Japanese tentacle porn is apparently what ensured the film was the first ever to get an NC-17 release in America. Go figure!?!?!

And then, while concentrating on her writing, a struggling Henry Miller, working on his famous book Tropic Of Cancer, walks into her life and she gets sucked into the whirlpool of ‘the decadent artist life’ in Paris at the time... falling in love with both Henry and June while also continuing loving, sexual encounters with her husband. I won’t say much more about the story content because, it’s based on diaries and so in terms of a through line... well there is one but it’s more a series of episodic, impressions of the time. And perhaps better for it.

And when I say it’s impressionistic, I mean just that. As you would expect from a Kaufman film, the director makes best use of his cinematographer Philippe Rousselot to literally paint a picture of the times, often harking back to those famous photographic shots of Paris and its nightlife that you would remember, some of which are one display in the film. The muted colours in certain compositions setting off visual memories in the mind of the watcher (at least it did to me) which often mirror those scenes of the Parisian night life which oft times spark the imagination. Indeed, there’s one scene where it becomes more blatantly channelled, as Anaïs and Henry are hanging around Brassaï (played here by Artus de Penguern) as he takes various shots which, I’m pretty sure, are used in their original form at each flash of the camera. 

The film is deeply erotic but holds back in many scenes of graphic ostentation (apart from standard nudity and the beauty of the female form without too much close up detail) while actually managing to be erotic more in its enthusiasm for the voracious appetites of human sexuality with an emphasis on the positivity of the experience more than anything else. The film starts off almost subconsciously foreshadowing the maelstrom that Anaïs’ life is about to explode into by using the opening bars of The Adoration Of The Earth from Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring and, I guess if you are familiar with the piece (which I wouldn’t have been when I went to see this in 1990) then you might get an idea of the emotional turmoil that the main characters will soon be going through. A piece by Eric Satie is used later, which of course lends it own mood to the way the images are percieved. 

My favourite two scenes of the movie are as follows. One where Henry and Anaïs are in a cinema watching Dali and Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou (which I guess is a bit of artistic licence because the film was already a couple of years old when this film is set) and Anaïs is vocally defending it against the rowdy audience criticising it for being obscene. 

And the other one is a scene in a brothel where Anaïs and Hugo hire two women to make love to each other so they can watch. It’s a nicely rendered sex scene featuring a cameo role from the great Brigitte Lahaie (again, another actress who I wouldn’t have been familiar with when I first saw this film) and it’s a stand out moment when, half way through, Anaïs tells Brigitte to stop pretending to be a man (in order to properly see how one woman makes love to another). 

So, yeah, Henry & June is a wonderfully performed, well designed movie featuring an exploration and juxtaposition of fleshy textures and warm (and sometimes muted) colours which make for a beautiful and, sometimes, hypnagogic piece of cinematic art. I think it’s a film which has been largely forgotten in the US (and UK) and I think it deserves to be remembered and celebrated with a bells and whistles Blu Ray and UHD release at some point soon. Another triumph for Kaufman and the, probably, liberating poetic sexuality of Anaïs Nin.

Sex Is Crazy

Cahiers Du Sex

Sex is crazy
Aka El sexo está loco
Directed by Jess Franco
Spain 1981
Severin Films USA Blu Ray 

So once again I find myself, as many of Severin Films’ target audience might proclaim… ‘in the land of Franco’. Jess Franco, to be a little more precise.

Now as some of my readers may remember, I do find Franco a bit hit and miss. When he’s good, he’s great. When he’s not he’s… churning out something much less than great and, while the latter verdict could be said for this particular movie, Sex Is Crazy, it also lives up to the caveat that, whether a Franco film is good or bad, it’s still always at least interesting… and this is certainly that.

This particular Classificada S film, it has to be said, since it was made in 1981, seems to be a bit of a throwback to earlier days. Just not to the earlier days of this particular director. Perhaps a more polite way of saying this is that it’s perhaps an experimental homage… and more on that a little later down the page.

The film stars Franco’s wife and muse Lina Romay who, like pretty much every other actor and actress in the film, appears in a state of undress for the majority of the running time. We start off with her having been abducted by naked, badly silver grease painted aliens… a bunch of whom (the male ones) subject her to alien impregnation. That is, they put their extra terrestrial penises inside her, within three seconds her stomach pumps up and within nine seconds she’s delivered a new baby. So maybe ten babies in and the whole thing is revealed as an elabourate stage show.

However, we then get into the behind the scenes drama where a conspiratorial plot seems to be about to come to fruition, before that is itself revealed as a movie being made. Which, then, like Russian nesting dolls, is also revealed as a movie being made, possibly and yeah… social norms are broken, such as two men and two women all marrying each other as a foursome, some direct fourth wall breaking and various other metatextual ploys, so to speak.

This makes for some bad simulated sex scenes (although it has to be said Romay herself is quite watchable and seductive in these moments… such as when it’s just her, the camera and her water bottle) and, a lot of it (not all) is fairly dull and pedestrian.

There don’t seem to be any specially built or dressed sets in the film… all internal and external locations but, of course, in the scenes where he’s not getting distracted by his zoom lens, Franco shoots these very well and there are some nice shots of exterior architectural detail captured in his lens.

However, the whole film felt, to me, like an homage to the early films of the French Nouvelle Vague movement… especially those films directed by Godard. A scene where a taxi driver is following a car and a later car scene felt like something you might find in À Bout De Souffle and, in addition, there are a lot of those typical distancing devices set up. I talked about the constant reveal structure earlier but we also have stuff like the narrator shouting out the constant, naked appearances of the producer’s girlfriend and also the use of music, which may stop or start suddenly, or sometimes just change style, within the middle of a scene, deliberately calling attention to itself in yet another attempt to disrupt the viewer from immersion into the film. It’s like the director was watching stuff like Godard’s Le Mépris and began taking notes for later use.

Unfortunately, for 1981, this feels like a very late homage to a style of cinema which had already played out a decade before this one… making it seem like a home movie where the actors… although most of the many male members on show are not actually erect, even in the simulated sex scenes… are having a better time making this stuff than any future audience might have. It reminded me a little, in spirit, of Jim Jarmusch’s movie The Dead Don’t Die (reviewed here), which employed similar tactics and also seemed to be doing this stuff way too late for any of the so called punchlines to fall anything but flat.

And that’s me about done, I think, on Jess Franco’s Sex Is Crazy. Not anywhere up there on my list of favourite Francos but, if you are into stuff like Shining Sex (reviewed here) you might be able to get something out of this one. It’s not a disaster but… yeah, it’s equally not great.

The Punishment

 

True Britt

The Punishment
aka La punition
France/Italy 1973 
Directed by Pierre-Alain Jolivet
Lira Films
Mondo Macabro Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Some big spoilers.

Before going into The Punishment, a podcast had said that it’s very strong and brutal stuff in terms of its S&M content so, I was a little trepidatious at first. However, while the mental brutality of the film is at least paying a little lip service to the edginess which could be found in some of the scenarios, I’d have to conclude the film is pretty tame and not, in any way, a study of sexuality which has anything to say, or even understands, the mental state of those who embrace elements of the BDSM scene (as it is called today) in their own persona. And, of course, like most scenarios crafted around this strand of sexuality... even the most positive ones... it generally looks at the content with a bias of non-consensuality. 

So what we have in The Punishment is a film which is more about a manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome than anything else. 

The film stars Karin Schubert as Britt, a woman who comes from a small village and is taken under the wing by a ‘couple’ (Amidou as Raymond  and Claudie Lange as François) who work for a wealthy man who will pimp her out as a prostitute in his sex club. The film starts off with Britt and Raymond fleeing one of his wild parties after the owner has been murdered there. They go on the run and the story is told mostly in flashbacks, cross cutting between the experiences of Britt under control of this rich man and Britt and Raymond on the run from one of his killers (although, it turns out, neither of them committed the murder themselves).

So after Britt ‘behaves badly’ when a client rapes her at a party, she is imprisoned in a kind of hotel brothel in Lyon, where she is locked in a room which is pretty much a dungeon room, to be the submissive for a series of clients who want to indulge their sadistic tendencies with her. Next door to her is another woman who seems to be in a much worse condition (she can hear her screams coming through the wall)... and by the end, Raymond feels sorry for her and frees both girls... but not before she has almost developed a taste for her treatment at the hands of the customers.

And it’s not the most interesting or graphically told story, although the problematic and stunning Karen Schubert does spend most of the film either naked or in fetishistic and revealing costumes. I say problematic because, due to problems with her son who later died on her, she turned to making hardcore pornography in the 1980s to help raise funds for him and, after his death, her mid-90s second attempt at suicide succeeded. But, aside from her tragic arc in real life, she was at the heyday of her career here and she gives a really good, somewhat icy but no less impressive performance as Britt. 

And the film is helped by some wonderful shot compositions which involve lots of verticals in the various rooms and some nice placement of mirrors to focus on people in shots and bring two characters together in an interesting way, so they can both be in different places in a room but you can still see both sides of the conversations in some places. And there is... I almost don’t want to say it because it’s become such a cliché in my reviews but, it’s still the best comparison I can think of... a nice colour palette which is Bavaesque in its execution, where characters are bathed in red, for example... and then pitched against another colour like green in the next shot. 

There are some nice ideas too... such as a pinball machine in an art gallery/amusement arcade/bar having a sculpture of woman’s legs coming up and out of the machine where the flippers are, so a person playing the table gives a simulation of sex with a pair of legs seemingly wrapped around the player. 

It also has some interesting moments of violence which are hard hitting and not connected to the violence perpetrated on Britt in the hotel brothel. Such as a girl pushing a bottle into somebody’s face and, without ruining the ending, a close up of a persons head with a blood squib going off in close up as they are shot... both make for somewhat shock moments in their placement in the movie, not being juxtaposed with the tame version of the sexual violence on show elsewhere in the film. 

Ultimately, I kinda liked the movie in spite of myself and was bowled over by both Schubert and the wonderful mise-en-scène of the piece, which even has one of those opening credits sequences often found in spaghetti westerns and the occasional giallo, where quick scenes from the film are posterised into two colours and put up as a kind of psychedelic accompaniment to the cast and crew typography. 

If I had one big criticism of The Punishment, though, it’s that the trauma inflicted on Britt doesn’t seem enough to make her accepting of the treatment she suffers. One or three isolated incidents do not really represent the slow, psychological degradation we see in her performance... or at least, not credibly, I thought. Slowly and surely would have won that particular race a little more believably, I would have thought.

So yeah, that’s me done with The Punishment, I think. I didn’t like it as much as similar films using this kind of theme such as Femina Ridens (reviewed here) or Scacco Alla Regina (reviewed here) or even The Image (reviewed here) but it was at least nice to see an attempt made to craft a film which was trying to tackle the subject matter in a head on direction, even if I don’t feel it was trying to look at that content in a sympathetic light. Not one I’d recommend to too many people but, again, for cinephiles it’s nice to look at.

Lustmord (Pleasure Kill)

Blood Is The Drug

Lustmord
aka Pleasure Kill
aka Bôkô Honban
Directed by Hisayasu Satô
1987
Vinegar Syndrome
Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers

Well this is the first film I’ve seen by this director but, as I dwell on it the next day, I find the usually not that helpful IMDB is being even worse than usual. None of the character names are listed and none of the actors, barring one guy who is in just one scene, have a photo. So… yeah, no clue. Sorry.

Now then, Lustmord is what the 1980s pinku (or pinky) film had evolved into, although I suspect a lot of what makes this one totally different to any other ‘pinky violence’ I’ve (so far) seen is the personality and interests of the director, celebrated here with the first volume of a series of Vinegar Syndrome box sets, each showcasing three films.

Now, I’ve always been bemused by Japanese censorship. It seems that absolutely anything unspeakably obscene or shocking such as… I don’t know…  people vomiting on each other or making love inside the entrails of a dissected horse… is fair game… as long as no genitalia are shown. Literally anything goes but… no cocks or vaginas please, seems to be the one sacred commandment.

This film follows that modus operandi and the director puts in the required amount of nudity, simulated sex and simulated rape galore to keep the studio (and the audience for this genre) happy… but infuses it with his own ideas and also goes all out on the sexual mutilation and death.

In this one, a single mother scientist launches a drug trial with three young ladies as volunteers. Unfortunately for all four women in this movie, her teenage son is experimenting with a drug he’s devised to cause the human brain to evolve beyond any form of misery and depression… and he spikes the girls’ drugs with his own formula. Unbeknownst to him (and them), this turns then into lusty nymphomaniacs who want to cut up themselves and others, as they get constantly sexed up.

Now this is a pinku film so his mum has a big masturbation scene using her dead husband’s framed photo before she even takes the drug. Said drug eventually administered by her son who, after raping one of the girls, also rapes his mum in her medical lab and leaves her injected with the stuff. Where she starts doing more of the same ramped up, sexual shenanigans. This is after he’s also taken a dose of the drug for himself.

The film, uses a platform video game called Valis - The Phantom Video Soldier (presumably an homage to Philip K. Dick’s Vast Active Living Intelligence System) as a kind of backdrop to the film, including some of the bright, 8 bit style music to augment the imagery and make a comment on it.

I’m no judge because I’m old and jaded but, I suspect the film’s imagery might be quite strong to some youngsters in the audience if they are not expecting it. Writhing naked bodies covered in blood and a body count killing all but one of the main cast. For example, as the son and the main girl writhe around on the floor, the blood from their various cuts spattered over their naked bodies, the guy mounts her and she slices his throat open, as we watch his arterial spray cover her face and naked body.

And, I have to admit it, I quite enjoyed the movie, mainly because the way it is shot has a kind of visually poetic beauty about it. I mean, the content is like a young Peter Greenaway melded with a young David Cronenberg while the whole thing is shot with the kind of artistry I would normally associate with an Italian giallo.

Two shots especially stood out for me… one including gore and sex and the other not. The earlier of the two shots, shows the main girl in her flat, standing next to her open fridge, the room split into vertical lines to push the composition. The fridge fills the whole right hand side of the screen and a whole load of beautiful, large, red apples fill every level of the fridge. And on the left of the screen is the girl, standing and looking towards camera, eating one of the apples. It’s a fantastic shot.

The other amazing moment is when the mother, in her naked sexual frenzy, is writhing around in her lab. She has tubing wrapped all around her which, as she masturbates, she hooks up to some blood (possibly hers) and we watch as the blood flows up the tubes and all around her body. It’s a beautiful shot, I promise.

But that’s me about done with Lustmord. The last shot of the film, after a twist reveal about two earlier sexual suicides (which if you’re anything like me, you will see coming a mile off) has one of the characters looking though binoculars before spotting the audience (so kind of breaking the fourth wall) and pulling out a knife… so engaging the viewer as the POV. It’s a nice enough ending to what is a very interesting film and so, yeah, something you should maybe take a look at if you are into this particular genre and I’m certainly looking forward to watching the other two movies in this set.

Café Flesh

 

Sexentuate The Positive

Café Flesh
Directed by 
Stephen Sayadian & Mark S. Esposito
USA 1982 
Caribbean Films Distribution/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Well this is a fairly strange movie. 

I first heard of Café Flesh when I met my friend Teresa in the late 1980s. She always used to mention wanting to see it as it semi-regularly played at venues such as the Scala Cinema and the Everyman at Hampstead (back in the days when the Everyman at Hampstead actually programmed good films and was worth going to). It’s something neither of us got around to.

Now, however, it’s out on a shiny new restoration from Mondo Macabro and, I have to say, it was not quite the film I was expecting it to be. 

The premise is that it takes place in a cabaret/cafe after the world has suffered a Third World War. This bizarre apocalypse has had the effect of leaving 90/95% of the population unable to indulge in any sexual activity whatsoever, because as soon as they try they become violently ill. These people, the majority of the surviving population, are known as negatives (or sex negatives). There is a small percentage of the population though, the positives, who have survived with their libidos in tact and are able to indulge in all manner of sexual activity. And, by law, they are legally required to perform in venues such as Café Flesh, to give the negatives something to gawp at... even though the effect on many of the audience members is actually pretty depressing. 

So the film is a series of these cabaret vignettes, involving hard core pornographic scenes, punctuated by scenes of the positives discussing their fate and, also, the heavy and irritating banter of the MC, who is a positive but who has lost his manly equipment in the Third World War. 

And it’s not what I was expecting, for sure. I mean, it has hardcore sex scenes including penetration and erect genitalia splashing the actors seed on various actresses but... I dunno. If anything, this is actually an anti-porn movie. The hard sex scenes, cut into five or six set pieces in the picture, probably total less than 15-20 minutes of the running time. And those scenes are pretty jumpy in and of themselves... cut in a shrewd way, much like the opening fight scene in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here). So it’s more highlights of sex than the full but, often dull, lick, pump and grind you’d expect from a porn movie. 

Not only that, but these sex scenes in particular are dressed up in thematic, burlesque style choreographies and sets which can, at best, be described as highly surreal (often invoking memories for the negatives of their past lives before the apocalypse). So, the first ‘domestic’ number has three adult babies shaking their rattles in their high chairs in time to the music while a ‘housewife’ is sexed up by a man dressed as a giant rat (much is made of his throbbing tale, naturally). Other sequences include an office bound sex scene where a man dressed as a giant pencil penetrates a lady office worker, while her secretary looks on and repeatedly asks “Do you want me to type a memo?” in rhythm to the music...

Which sounds surreal and it sure is, until you compare to the sequence where two men with telephones on thier faces go to work on a lady and a lesbian scene set to a backdrop of barbed wire and the sounds of gunfire and air raid sirens. But perhaps this is to be expected in a movie where the ultimate pinnacle of male handsome is referenced as Jack Lord (I bet he would have been pleased with that) and where a couple of characters are referred to as the ‘Dagwood and Blondie’ of the scenario.

Now, the film looks pretty good with a stylistic flair which suits the premise and, pretty much all of the actors from the world of porn... Paul McGibboney, Michelle Bauer, Marie Sharp, Tantala Ray and so on, are really great (I’m not talking about the sex content here... like most porn actors of the time, they are first and foremost actors). However, the synthesiser music by Mitchell Froomis... uh. It’s both irritating and bizarrely appropriate to the story and, even though I hated it while I was watching it, it’s also kind of haunting and I wish I could get this thing on a proper CD (instead of vinyl or digital download... so not going anywhere near it in those formats, thanks). 

And that’s me pretty much done on the very interesting Café Flesh. A film that is well thought out in concept and certainly makes the viewer think about the milieu and also what this story may well be a metaphor of (and I’m sure people have their own interpretations). My one criticism would be some of the sound design... I’m sorry but that actress wouldn’t possibly be able to make those kind of sounds with the other actor’s male member lodged firmly in her throat like that... it would surely be more muffled. Other than that though... a very interesting watch and I can see how high concept pornography like this must have been an influence on directors such as Michael Ninn, ten or so years later. 

Monster On The Campus

Coelacampus

Monster On The Campus
USA 1958
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal/Eureka Masters Of Cinema 
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Primitive spoilers lurching your way.

So the third and final film presented in the Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray set Three Monster Tales Of Sci-Fi Terror, in as amazing a transfer as you could possibly want, is the great Jack Arnold’s last sci-fi/horror movie, Monster On The Campus... an attempt to cash in on the phenomenal success of AIP’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf. In this one though, it’s the authority figure Professor Donald Blake, played by the always likeable Arthur Franz, who is the victim of inadvertent transformations while the teenage contingent of the movie, as represented by the likes of future teen star Troy Donahue as Jimmy, no less, are on the sidelines as observers to the monster shenanigans in this one. 

So the film starts off with the delivery of a coelacanth being brought in a van to the Dunsfield University, specifically to the lab/classroom combination used by Professor Blake (yeah, I know, I’ll get to that character name in a little while, true believers). Blake is dating Madeline, played by Joanna Moore, the daughter of the principal of the university. However, the bloody water washed off by this creature, which we find out later has been treated with gamma radiation to help keep it fresh, drips down form the van and Jimmy’s German Shepherd, Samson, has a drink. It’s only a matter of minutes before the dog goes berserk and attacks people, its canine teeth grown to twice their size. After a while the dog returns to its normal, docile self but, before then, lots of other things have happened.

Professor Blake must be the unluckiest scientist in the world. Not only does he accidentally snag his hand on the tooth of the coelacanth when he’s moving it, he also accidentally dunks his wound in the same bloody water. It’s not long before the professor transforms into a ‘badly masked up’ ape man (courtesy of Bud Westmore, demonstrating here that he obviously didn’t have much of a hand in the great Millicent Patrick’s Creature From The Black Lagoon design... read my review of the book The Lady From The Black Lagoon for further information on that right here) and he kills a girl before waking up, transformed back into a man with no memory of the incident, just as concerned as the police with catching the vile killer who did such a thing. It turns out later that, you are only affected once by the blood but, like I said, unluckiest scientist in the world because, after shooing away a dragon fly which had been feeding off the coelacanth, it returns in a two foot long giant form and the professor has to kill it with a dagger before it eats itself out of the net he’s tried to capture it with. However, when he’s moving its body, infected blood from it drips into the bulb of his pipe and, it’s not long before he’s inhaling coelacanth blood fumes and turns into the ape man again... killing his police bodyguard (assigned to him should ‘the killer’ return). 

And so on and so it goes. This is not remembered as much as some of the other famous ‘atomic era’ Universal monster movies of the 1950s and, it was their penultimate grab at this kind of movie for the decade, but it’s entertaining enough even though some of it, such as the awful mask used to create the ape creature, signifying man’s transformation back to a primitive state, is quite laughable. But the giant dragonfly, even though it’s obviously a mechanical creature with the only moving parts being the flapping wings, is actually pretty good, I thought and I would love to have seen more done with a movie just about these things. 

As usual for the time, the acting is all good stuff and everyone is taking it all very seriously, including the great Whit Bissell, playing a doctor in this one (of the many creature movies in which you can see him in). There are also some nice in-jokes in this one too, all taken in deadly earnest of course, such as when somebody rings a Dr Moreau in Madagascar to get some information about how the coelacanth was packaged and shipped. This is, of course, a reference to the title character from H. G. Wells ‘man to creature’ novel, The Island Of Dr, Moreau. Stuff like this will always keep me watching... as will the music with it’s bold stingers and sinister noodling. 

What’s not a joke and what hit me straight away on this viewing (I obviously didn’t remember this film from the last time I watched it over a decade ago but, it all came back to me as I was looking at it on this wonderful new presentation), was the main protagonist/antagonist’s lead character, Dr. Donald Blake. Now I’ve said on a fair few of these 1950s Universal B movie monster reviews that certain elements seem to have inspired the creators of the early 1960s Marvel comics, such as Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Jack ‘King’ Kirby and... this one is no exception...

Donald Blake would, of course, in a few years, be the alter ego of The Mighty Thor, back in the days when the frail human would bang his cane into the ground and (without even saying the magic word Shazam, which was obviously another inspiration from Fawcett’s original Captain Marvel comics) suddenly transform by a lightning bolt into Thor (although Blake does get a brief mention in the 2011 Thor movie... but as an entirely different character). Also, one of the ‘plaster of Paris’ masks of man’s faces throughout the process of evolution, displayed in Blake’s classroom, looks amazingly similar to the original Jack Kirby artwork of The Incredible Hulk. I’m not sure if that is a coincidence or not but, given the evidence of other obvious ‘cinematic influences’, there’s a chance that we might be looking at the prototype of Hulk right there, especially if a shot from the film including that prop was ever used in any publicity photos of the time. 

And, yeah, I don’t have much more to say about Monster On The Canpus. It’s actually, despite the bad mask worn by the title campus dweller, quite an entertaining and quirky picture. Definitely one which is worth screening alongside the other similar movies of this period and, frankly, I can’t imagine it looking any better than it does here. As I said, both the print and the transfer are absolutely excellent... like it was shot just last week. Definitely a must purchase for fans of the genre of this period, for sure. 

UFO

MoonStraker

UFO
Century 21 TV 1970-1971
Network Blu Ray B
26 episodes

UFO was Gerry Anderson’s first crack at a TV show featuring live action performers instead of his Supermarionation puppets of previous shows such as Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 (although he had worked on live action movies before). It was also his first stab at making television for an older, more adult audience and yeah, there are definitely some instances of mild violence, sexual undertones and mature themes explored in the show. It aired for only one series between 1970 - 1971.

And, yeah, I was two to three years old and I loved it. To the extent I had the UFO Interceptor from Dinky. The one with the challenging, pull back lever on the underside which took insane amounts of strength to be able to pull to reload the front missile (look, it was a hard pull for a three year old, okay!) and with the distinctive green metal casing which was completely out of keeping with the white ones seen in the show.

Set in the future world of... 1980... the show starred the great Ed Bishop (who is in a few Bond movies in very minor roles and who was, of course, the voice of Captain Blue in Captain Scarlet) as Ed Straker, the leader of SHADO, which stood for Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation. And it’s amazing how, for a top secret organisation set up to prevent enemy UFOs from attacking the Earth, the SHADO symbol was emblazoned on all the vehicles out in the field. Hmm.

He was backed up by George Sewell (I met him once as a child, his father used to live in the same block of flats as my nan and was friendly with her) and Michael Billington as the primary action man for the show. About two thirds of the way through the show, there was some kind of strike in the studios and, when the balance of the episodes started filming again, Sewell (and a number of actors) were unable to continue (or were fired, I don’t think the American distributors liked Sewell) and so other actors came in, such as Wanda Ventham (mother of Benedict Cumberbatch). Also, the Earth based doctor was played by Vladek Sheybal, who of course plotted to bring about the downfall of 007 in From Russia With Love (reviewed here). 

The series obviously relied on the model making skills and miniature work of Anderson’s regular Supermarionation people and so we had three lines of defence highlighted on the show, each with their own personnel and vehicles. 

So first line of defence was the moon base, where the Interceptors would get launched and all the ladies on the staff wore silvery white, figure hugging costumes and purple wigs (no explanation was given for this). Then you had the ground Earth defence force where Straker was based (an underground base situated beneath the Harlington-Straker film studios, which was their cover operation), which had the trucks with hidden rockets and lasers called SHADOmobiles.  Alas, I never had the Dinky version of the SHADOmobile but always wanted one.

Lastly there was the undersea submarine which launched a kind of hunter plane, it’s rockets somehow igniting under the water and propelling it out of the ocean and into the air. All the people on the submarine... again for no obvious reason... wore string vests. Although the real sexism of the show became apparent here because the female crew were obviously wearing something light in a strategic place below the vest, so you couldn’t see their nipples. C’mon ladies! Equality in the workplace please!

And every week a few guests would appear in the acting roster, some of which would later become famous and some of whom were already big names... but it’s interesting to see ‘unknowns’ such as  Steven Berkoff, David Warbeck and James Cosmo on the show. Along with such stalwarts as George Cole and, even, as a replacement secretary for Straker in a few episodes, Miss Moneypenny herself,  Lois Maxwell. 

And I loved the show then and, finally seeing it again after all this time, I love it now. 

A sign of the times... everybody smokes at work in this (and I mean everybody) and the drinks dispensers on the base are there if you want to help yourself to a refreshing cup of... checks notes... vodka or whiskey while meeting with your boss. So, yeah... the seventies ruled, even if they were pretending to be the eighties (which in no way compared in real life to this wonderful version of that decade). I mean, even the dialogue is almost jaw dropping by today’s standards but we would have thought nothing of lines such as “These clouds give about as much cover as a g-string on a bellydancer!” at the time.

But what strikes me most is the quality of the writing and the stories on this show. I mean, okay, the early episodes were all about showing off the various craft and tech as these defenders of the Earth took out the evil UFOs but, after a while, the show settles down and really tackles interesting issues and gets into real adult drama. Such as the one where Ed’s son is run over in front of his estranged wife’s home (partially his fault) and how he has to put a UFO emergency ahead of flying the required medication needed to save his son using the company’s gadgets, thus resulting in the death of his son. Not to mention stuff like a submarine trapped at the bottom of the ocean with a claustrophobic Straker aboard, an episode where time can be altered and frozen at will by the aliens and a few dealing with alien mind control where ‘friendlies’ are turned into killers. 

Probably my favourite episode, though, is a flashback story called Confetti Check A-OK, where we go right back to the start and a freshly married Straker is asked to spend the next ten years setting up SHADO... and we watch it all being built over the course of the episode, as we also watch the work take a toll on Ed and his wife, witnessing the total disintegration of the marriage. This is one of a few amazing episodes of the show which really hits hard and makes you think.

And of course, all the way through the series, we have regular Anderson composer Barry Gray’s toe tapping music accompanying the cast on their various adventures. I used to whistle this all the time as a kid and, of course, it’s still quite an earworm.

So, yeah, I’d have to say my revisiting of UFO was an entirely positive one. I really enjoyed myself on this. Alas for all concerned, the series was successful but cancelled after one series. However, the direction that Anderson had been heading in for series two, which would concentrate more on the moonbase side of things, was quickly converted into the starting idea for a new live action series, which would run for two years and was called Space 1999 (reviewed here). But, yeah, UFO was a solid sci-fi TV series of the time which did what the genre does best, use the fantastic framework to explore real life ideas in a situation where those ideas could be explored beyond the boundaries of the everyday world. I’m pleased that this one lived up to my hazy memories, for sure. Definitely worth a watch.

Magnum Force

Soul Reaver

Magnum Force
Directed by Ted Post
USA 1973
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler.

For the second Dirty Harry movie, Ted Post took over direction although, it’s been said more than once that things on set were bad between him and Eastwood and, allegedly, Eastwood ended up directing a fair amount of the picture himself. I’m assuming there may be some truth to that and Eastwood certainly had proven himself a good director already, with his masterpiece Play Misty For Me (reviewed here). 

Magnum Force takes an idea for one of the rejected scripts for the original Dirty Harry (which I reviewed here) about a rogue team of killer cops, meting out their own lethal brand of justice, when the bad guys get away or are allowed to walk due to  the stupidity of the legal system. This was inspired by the Brazilian death squads that were in the news at the time. 

There was a good reason why Eastwood particularly wanted to bring this story idea to the screen. The huge positive reaction to the first movie was more than tempered by an outcry that his central character was some kind of vigilante, taking the law into his own hands. While this isn’t actually true if you pay attention on that first movie, that was how the film was being perceived and criticised by some and so Eastwood liked the idea of Harry Callahan using the system he hates so much to align himself against a group of conspirators within the same department he works for. And the guy who co-wrote the screenplay was... John Milius (future director of Conan The Barbarian, reviewed here).

Now anyone who’s seen Milius talk in an interview will know the director is not shy about his love of heavy artillery and war and this certainly comes to the fore in the film, with a lot of talk about the various guns the police are using and the way Harry matches up the shells from the bodies at the crime scene with one he manages to ‘stage vanish’ during a shooting competition. 

And it’s especially prevalent in the opening credits, where Lalo Schifrin’s excellent score (probably his best of the four of the five films he provided for the series) plays out against a hand holding a Magnum pistol in profile against a vivid red background... which looks especially good on Blu Ray. Then as the credits end, there’s Clint Eastwood’s voice performing a heavily truncated voice over of his famous “do you feel lucky” speech as the gun is turned towards the audience and fired at them, presumably a nod by Milius to a similar moment in the 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery, which scared audiences so much at the time. 

We then move onto the story and we have the relatively recently deceased David Soul playing one of the four cops who are going around executing criminals. It’s said... and this is almost certainly true... that he was spotted to play Hutch in Starsky And Hutch (which debuted on TV in 1975) because of this film. We also have Hal Holbrook (who many readers may best remember as the priest in John Carpenter’s The Fog, reviewed here) as an obstacle of a superior officer who is also embroiled in what’s going on... you’ll probably figure out his part in all this before it gets revealed on screen.

No mention is made of Harry Callahan’s end scene in Dirty Harry, where he throws away his badge and walks away from policing. I guess he must have changed his mind. Mention is made of his partner in that film retiring but this is the first film where his partner gets killed... quite possibly because of him, or at least, because of what he finds out. 

It’s not a particularly action packed film but it is nicely put together and the pace never really feels slow. As a kid I always liked this one the least (until The Dead Pool came out) but these days I actually quite like it. Again, it benefits hugely from being able to watch it in its original aspect ratio, as opposed to the pan and scan versions we would have seen on TV in the late 1970s. It’s also very much a seventies film in that little details of shots which are aesthetically pleasing are dwelled on, even though they don’t contribute to the unfolding of the story in any major way. So, for instance, there’s a wonderful shot of one of the killer’s police boots splashing through a wet puddle, followed by a shot highlighting the wet footprints of those boots on some steps. It’s a pleasure to watch things like this which are just catching little elements of life, rather than having to have everything leading into something else in the story, to be honest. 

Harry’s catchphrase in this movie is “A man has to know his limitations” but I can’t remember if this made it into any of the other movies. Certainly, although Schifrin’s score is excellent and using a more frenetic melodic palette, the orchestration is the same and, although there’s not a lot of it in the movie, Harry’s theme does make the occasional appearance in at least one scene (I think it’s only one scene actually but, it’s certainly there).

The final showdown between Harry and the motorcycle cops is lengthy but doesn't really feel particularly climactic. The bikers seem to go down too easily (these days they’d get up for another few rounds of fighting) and David Soul’s villain especially, left to last (well, almost last... but again, that gets into spoiler territory), literally just drives his bike off a ship into some water and, well, the fall supposedly kills him. That’s probably true to life but, yeah, you wouldn’t get away with that in Hollywoodland these days, that’s for sure.

The film is pretty good though. Certainly bleak but also with a certain charm and Eastwood in particular is very good as the lead here. And Schifrin’s score really picks up the pace and follows through, creating tension in shots which might not work if it wasn’t for his persistent half jazz, half suspense stylings. Magnum Force further cements Eastwood’s international superstar status and it’s revisiting films like this that reminds me why he has that reputation. I’m looking forward now to revisiting the third one in the series next, as that one was always my favourite (even without Schifrin on scoring duties). 

Conan The Barbarian (1982)

Crom Night

Conan The Barbarian (1982)
USA/Spain/Mexico 1982 
Directed by John Milius
20th Century Fox 
Australian Blu Ray All Zones 

“They told him to thrown down his sword in the earth. 
Ha! Time enough for earth in the grave.”
The Wizard, Conan The Barbarian (1982)

A quick note about the Blu Ray version of the classic film which I used for this review. It’s the Australian edition which my cousin, who lives there now, got to me fairly cheaply. The reason I chose this one is because it contains two different versions of the movie, dependent on what zone your Blu Ray is set to. If you watch this on the British setting, Zone B, it will only play the censored version of the film, falling in line with the BBFC categorisation. However, if you have a multizone machine and play it in another country’s zone, such as Zone A (US zone), then it will play the full length, uncensored version of the film.

I was fourteen years old when I first saw the AA rated (14 years and over... if you can remember that ratings system) Conan The Barbarian on its original cinema release back in 1982. However, I was quite familiar with the long series of short stories published in the UK at the time, which included the original 1930s stories by Robert E. Howard and intermingled with additional stories either expanded from unfinished Howard manuscripts or, more notoriously, rewriting other Howard tales and transforming them into Conan stories. I had read a few of the Marvel comic books and magazines too, of course but, not many of them compared to the amount of novelised collections of the character I read. 

So I knew what to expect from the character and, although I remember being slightly disappointed when the skeleton from whom Conan stole his sword didn’t rise up and attack him as the mummified remains did in the L. Sprague De Camp story that sequence was based on (although, there is a very slight suggestion that he almost does), I still felt that John Milius and his cast/crew had done an amazing job of, not only making an entertaining movie but, really staying to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s original works. I’ve always thought of this as the last great studio ‘heroic fantasy’ genre film and, despite the number of knock offs (and even a genuine sequel), not to mention some not so great adaptations of Tolkien in recent years, I still stand by that. A few have come close but this one... this is the last great one I think, after all those films by the likes of Ray Harryhausen... where everything comes together to make things work and create the perfect ‘sword and sorcery’ film.

John Milius’ script, which trashed a lot of Oliver Stone’s previous draft and reset it in the original mythical timeline of Robert E. Howard’s fictional Hyborian Age (the film was originally to have been set in the far future like some kind of post-apocalyptic tale), is a pretty good creation and one of its strengths is that it gives a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had a very strong Austrian accent at that time, very minimal dialogue to work with. He was a relative newcomer on the acting scene but two things really help this very capable and interesting actor out near the start of his career. Number one is that he was surrounded with truly great co-stars like James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader) who played the film’s lead villain, Thulsa Doom and, of course, the great Max Von Sydow (who plays a cameo as King Osric) and this was a good training ground for him, I reckon. 

Secondly, the minimal dialogue, while serving the actual character of Conan fairly well and helping make the character more convincing (he’s perhaps a little less wordy than his literary counterpart, if memory serves), allowing Schwarzenegger’s physical presence and attitude to define the role, is actually both very well written and, except in a few notable instances, is the pattern for the majority of the other characters in the movie too. Including Schwarzenegger’s brilliant co-stars Sandahl Bergman as Valeria and Gerry Lopez as Subotai (although they also get a few scenes to let their dialogue go beyond the few words variety here and there). Epic and poetic streaks of minimal dialogue like, for example... “The blood became as snow.” from the wizard, played by Mako, who is also the film’s narrator. 

A lot of the time the movie is almost silent acting but, that’s okay because the richness of the visual images, the fluid editing and the tremendous achievement of the musical score written by the late Basil Poledouris, means that the film really doesn’t need to lean on the crutch of dialogue and, in fact, cinema was born without it anyway, to an extent. 

Thinking about my favourite sequence in the film... after Conan has been crucified and bites the throat out of a vulture (which is a scene from one of the many Howard stories rubbed together and fashioned into a completely new story for the film), after he is brought back to life again... Conan, Subotai and Valeria penetrate Thulsa Doom’s lair in a sequence where they rescue King Osric’s daughter while taking on a fairly heavy loss. The whole sequence lasts maybe 12 or 14 minutes but, during the whole thing until the three thieves have escaped, just before one of them gets shot with a snake (yeah, you read that right), there are only four lines of minimal dialogue, comprising nine words. I noted them down as I watched this time...

Subotai: So this is paradise?
When he catches a glimpse of an enthusiastic orgy of cannibals.
Valeria: The princess!
Valeria: Come on.
Big, heavy looking villain: You!

The movie is pure cinema whichever way you look at it and, though I’m not all that happy with some of the satire on show... it takes a serious side swipe at hippies although, to be fair, it also bashes suicide cults at the same time (so it can’t all be bad), I’d have to say that the film certainly holds up to repeated viewings over the decades (I’m not sure if I’m into double figures on this movie yet but, getting there). It’s also probably one of the first films (at least released into cinemas in this country) to mix the bloody violence and gore which, even when the 1930s Weird Tales pulps the stories were first published in, are part and parcel of many of the literary yarns published in this genre. It actually felt, for a brief amount of time, that fantasy cinema was actually, finally growing up. Alas, the kiddies would win out in the end... and I’ll discuss what happened with the sequel when I rewatch that one very soon.

The film has some outstanding set pieces and moments, many inspired from the original short stories, plus some nice cinematic ideas... such as the sweat from Conan’s head as he steals a dazzling jewel dripping onto the eye of a giant snake which then awakes and attacks him. There are also some of Milius’ movie influences on quite vivid display too. The setting up of the encampment for the final battle sequence is like a miniature homage to Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and the writing that covers Conan’s body to help protect it from demons, when the wizard is trying to stop his almost dead body from being taken by them, is reminiscent of the writing used to try and stop other supernatural creatures in one of the segments of Kobayashi’s Kwaidan.

And then there’s that beautiful score by Basil Poledouris. I don’t think I’ve seen many ‘greatest film score’ lists over the last few decades that haven’t included this in their top ten. Certainly, I think it’s one of the most astounding achievements in the art of film music and one piece of music, The Orgy, co-composed by Poledouris with his daughter Zoe, which uses a repeat structure similar in style to Ravel’s Bolero, it seems to me, is easily my favourite piece of film music ever written. 

The score serves both as something supporting the movie’s emotional moments but also has its own ways of giving to the story. For instance, in a wonderful montage where we see Conan grow from a child into Arnold Schwarzenegger, pushing a giant Wheel Of Pain for a decade, Poledouris writes in screeching iron to the track, something which starts, timed to the rhythm of the score, as soon as the wheel first comes into the left of the shot, like a sound effect but, in this case, a musical punctuation. And, of course, as a stand alone listen, this is a fantastic work of art. I own various incarnations of this score on vinyl and then CD over the years, including one which is transcribed for solo church organ as an album. 

And that’s me done with the absolutely brilliant, first cinematic incarnation of Conan The Barbarian. I could never recommend this movie enough to anybody and this hopefully won’t be the last time I watch it. I’ll be jumping onto the slightly less satisfying sequel, which I’ve not seen more than a few times and don’t remember all that well, sometime very soon. Also, if you’re into this kind of thing, I’ll hopefully be reading a thick doorstop of a reprint of all the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories as they appeared in Weird Tales, in an absolutely beautiful hardback edition (double columned like those original magazines, no less), so look out for a review of that at some point too... 

No, wait, I ended up reading that and posting the review long before I got around to putting this review up so, yeah, you can read that review right here. 

The Martian Chronicles

Tyrr For Fear

The Martian Chronicles
Airdate: 27 January – 29 January 1980
Final Cut Entertainment Region B Blu Ray 
Three Episodes

Warning: Spoilers wistfully lapping at the edges of your consciousness

There was a bit of a delay before the TV mini series based on the great Ray Bradbury ‘novel’ of the same name aired (although there was a bizarre, truncated cinema release of it released in French cinemas the year before). It was held back for around about a year because, at a press conference for the show, which was adapted by the great Richard Matheson in terms of the writing, in close collaboration with Bradbury himself, Mr. Bradbury saw fit to tell the people of the press how ‘boring’ this production was.

It’s funny though... I remembered viewing the series in a far better light when I was a kid on that first airing and without it I probably wouldn’t have rushed out and purchased the novel that same week it hit our screens. I remember when I read it thinking how right the show had got the atmosphere of the book... not much action, wistful, philosophical, poetic, slowly paced... everything I associated with Bradbury so, as far as I was concerned, it was a great adaptation and I revisited it back near the start of the DVD era and, I still liked it. Well, now it’s on a UK Blu Ray release and, what can I say? I still love it and, when I rewatched it with the family, the four and a half hours of it went down very well. 

To be fair, I do remember it not being popular with too many of the other kids in the school playground back in the 80s but, well, if you were into sci fi even a little bit in those days, you were always going to be an outcast at school. 

I say it’s based on a novel by Bradbury but, well, if the mini series, which was broadcast in three episodes titled The Expeditions, The Settlers and The Martians, seems like a patchwork quilt of episodic short stories with a bit of an overall arc, that’s because the source was. The ‘novel’ The Martian Chronicles was published in 1950 but most of the stories comprising the narrative had been published in magazines before. At the request of his publisher, Bradbury reworked the stories, such as ‘The Silver Locusts’ and added lots of ‘story glue’ to make it work as a single tome. And it’s fine like it is (I should read it again) and, as far as I’m concerned, so is the mini series. 

It was star studded too... just some of the names who appeared in it were the male lead (part of the glue in the overall arc) played by Rock Hudson, joined by the likes of Gayle Hunnicutt, Bernie Casey, Darren (Kolchack) McGavin, Barry Morse, Nicholas (Spider-Man) Hammond, Roddy McDowall, Fritz Weaver, Maria Schell, Bernadette Peters and even a cameo by Jon Finch (playing a manifestation of Jesus Christ... who has the same initials as his great role of Jerry Cornelius, of course). 

The show is basically an exploration of ideas of the way humanity (as seen as Americans) manage to accidentally wipe out the ancient race of martians by accidentally bringing chicken pox, before colonising the planet. However, most of them leave Mars (or Tyrr, as it is in the Martian tongue) again because there is a war on Earth... the few who stay witness the Earth’s destruction by nuclear war and, though they survived by staying on Mars, it would be true that the few who stayed don’t necessarily think of themselves as the lucky ones. 

And everyone is fabulous in it. And, yes, it is slow and perhaps the times in a post-Star Wars movie era were such that people weren’t expecting what was delivered but, I think it’s stood the test of time. It’s essentially like watching episodes of The Twilight Zone, with stories such as the wonderful encounter by the man and woman who think they’re the last two people left on Mars, the man who builds androids of his late wife and daughter to stop the loneliness, the man who accidentally kills a martian because he thinks he is intending him harm rather than the act of kindness his fellow martians are doing for him... and the priest who meets balls of light but then accidentally manifests a martian as a crucified Christ. 

And it’s a great show, I throroughly enjoyed it. I stood by it back when it first aired and I stand by it now. If you’re expecting sci-fi action and spectacle then maybe you won’t find what you want here but, if you want a show to haunt you with thoughts about the way mankind chooses to live its life, then maybe you should give this one a go. Oh, and the music by Stanley Myers is really great... the CD usually gets a spin or two every year. 

So, if you want a slice of thoughtful and poetic science fiction to balance out all the other stuff, then this recent(ish) Blu Ray edition of The Martian Chronicles is a good way to get acquainted with it, for sure. 

My 16th Anniversary Blog

 

Saturation Disclosure

16 Years Of NUTS4R2

Well today marks the 16th anniversary of the blog and so, thank you to those who have stuck with me so far and, as always, thanks to the new readers. I literally only found out it was an anniversary a day and a half before this thing has to go up but, hopefully this one won’t seem too rushed in the writing.

Okay, so for this year’s post I thought I’d once again talk about what the beloved and much appreciated boutique blu ray labels are doing, this time in their own countries… although it was inspired by an email I received from Indicator this morning about a label talking about another country.

So on the pre-release/pre-order announcement of Indicator’s deluxe blu ray release of Lamberto Bava’s Macabre, there was, shouting out in upper case letters, the following disclaimer/heads up!*

PLEASE NOTE: THE US EDITION OF MACABRE WILL BE RELEASED BY VINEGAR SYNDROME USING THE SAME RESTORATION AND EXTRA FEATURES AS CO-PRODUCED BY POWERHOUSE FILMS AND VINEGAR SYNDROME.

Which hit me as an odd but, certainly, welcome caveat. On the plus side… finally a label who recognises that probably more than half of the people who would buy such a title would be getting it from whichever country releases it first. They’ve pre-warned customers that they can get, more or less, the same content in both countries from both Indicator (in the UK) and Vinegar Syndrome (in the USA). So, yeah, more of this kind of forewarning please, it’s very welcome.

Alas, sadly for me (and also probably for many of the UK audience that such a title would appeal to), my first reaction was… ‘Wait. Didn’t I already buy that title fairly recently from 88 Films, also in the UK?’ And the answer, again sadly, was yes!

So we are now in a situation where a film is licensed to one company and, not that long after (only six years, in fact), the same film is being sold by another label, who now have the licence. Rather than said label, in this particular instance Indicator, releasing something that hasn’t been released already in a) the UK or b) the rest of the world.

So yeah, every time this stuff happens, I feel like I’m being punished by the very labels I make a point of supporting. Do I need to buy this one again? Both Indicator and Vinegar Syndrome tend to be thorough with their materials, transfers and extras but… well I’ve bought stuff from 88 Films before which seems to be using the same elements as Vinegar Syndrome so… is it really worth it to double dip on this title? Especially since, like most physical media buyers I know, another ten years may roll by before I even get a chance to watch it because of all the good stuff that’s getting released these days.

And it’s not like this is an isolated incident either. Around a year ago I bought an HMV Exclusive in the UK box of the classic 1970s film Westworld (I revisited it but I haven’t even got my review up on this blog yet) but, already, Arrow Films UK have brought out their own special edition of the film.

Similarly, I bought the 88 Films UK blu rays of the Shaw Brothers productions of Black Magic and Black Magic 2 not all that long ago... so imagine my slight disappointment when I found both films had been included in Arrow’s UK’s recent Shawscope Volume 4 boxed set.

I think there needs to be some law around about how long a licence can be sold onto another company and a new version put out, to save all this double/treble dipping. Certainly for releases in the same country but, bearing in mind that the target audience for these particular things are going to be buying from all the different territories then, well... globally too.

Just a little food for thought there. And if you’re still reading then, thanks once again for supporting the NUTS4R2 blog. It really is much appreciated.

*As I was writing this, the email announcement of the same film came into my inbox from Vinegar Syndrome, which included more hidden and similar but, less shouty, wording.

Lady Terminator

Terminate Her

Lady Terminator
aka Pembalasan ratu pantai selatan
Indonesia 1989
Directed by H. Tjut Djalil
108 Sound Studio 
Mondo Macabro DVD 0

Warning: Spoilers I guess... it’s not that kind of movie.

I’ve been meaning to catch up to Lady Terminator for a couple of decades now. After a point, I decided to not grab the old Mondo Macabro DVD because I thought, surely a film as cool sounding as this would be getting a Blu Ray release soon? Well, apparently not. I recently listened to a Mondo Macabro podcast from a couple of years ago and, apparently, while they’d like to do a Blu Ray, there are some rights issues on that format so, that’s torpedoed for a while, it would seem. So, yeah, I eventually sourced the old DVD copy least. And, yeah, the picture is a little softer than I would have liked but it’s still quite watchable. 

Okay, so this is not quite in the realms of a ‘so bad it’s good movie’ because, some of the production values for the time aren’t too terrible (I mean, they’re also not great but, yeah, watchable). This is, it has to be said, more of a ‘so silly it’s good’ kind of movie and, anyone who knows me will known that silliness is a quality I treasure highly. And this is, indeed, an attempt to blend mythical Indonesian goddess legend The Queen Of The South Seas (in a slightly changed variant, from what I can tell, after having read about some of these stories) and transplanting it into a... ‘not even trying to hide it’, blatant riff on James Cameron’s The Terminator. Just without even the relatively low budget that first movie had and, you know, without the time travel aspect. The film even has it emblazoned on the credits... Original story from The Legend Of The South Sea Queen.

The pre-credits sequence depicts an actress called Fortunella playing The Queen Of The South Seas in days gone by. In her ‘under the sea’ but sometimes floating on the surface castle, she kills another in a long line of lovers during intercourse. Now at first I believed this was just a case of ‘vagina dentata’ when she bites the man’s cock off with her undercarriage and, that’s certainly what I’d been led to believe by the aforementioned podcast. But, no, the Goddess lady just has a big, bitey snake living up in her genitalia. Although it seems to do a lot of ‘arterial spray kind of damage’ to the men in question. Which leads her to ask the question... “Is there any man who can satisfy me?”

Well be careful what you wish for because... her 100th lover, a wizardish chap, pulls the snake from her sexy bits before it can do the damage. She promptly vanishes but not before putting a curse on him, telling him his great, great granddaughter will die from her hand. 

Roll credits and then, after they've played out, we are transplanted to modern day (1989) Indonesia, where a young anthropology student played by Barbara Anne Constable is researching the legend and, ends up sinking to her sea castle, being magically tied up to the Queen’s bed and then having a badly cartooned snake penetrating her bikini bottoms and up into her crotch. The idea being that this has turned her into a minion of the South Sea Queen to seek out and extract her revenge on the great, great granddaughter. Oh, and it also somehow turns her into a machine-like cyborg, as we see her rise naked from the sea and sex up two local men, who both are killed using exactly the same MO as the original lady... having their penises lopped off by the incisors of the snake in her undercarriage. Not a machine snake though... it’s all a bit odd, to tell the truth. The police autopsy report later says... “Cocks bitten off by eels.” so, yeah, make your mind up people!

Okay, we then cut to the great, great granddaughter, local song singer celebrity Erica, played by Claudia Angelique Rademaker (from what I can tell, the IMDB really is bad at trying to figure out who’s who on non-American movies). When Lady Terminator comes for her in a crowded bar, the bullet count is high and she’s only just rescued by hero cop Max, her new love interest played by Christopher J. Hart. It’s amazing how most of these actors and actresses only have this one film to their credit. 

The film then becomes a chase and a series of action sequences, punctuated by the occasional sex scenes and, of course, it includes some additional male member chomping action. Lady T seems obsessed with destroying men’s genitalia much of the time, it has to be said. At one point she riddles a cop with plentiful machine gun bullets until he’d deader than dead but, still takes a second to kick him in the balls before moving on. Another cop is riddled with machine gun bullets in his testicle region too. This lady is really going balls to the wall in this movie, for sure! 

But, of course, it also has to hit all those ‘similarities’ to The Terminator. So she uses the police band to track them, drives through the wall of the police station and crushes a cop against the wall in the process and even has a scene where she slices out her damaged eye with a scalpel in a mirror, before fixing said eyeball and returning it, after she heals it with her electricity eyeball powers. Oh, right, I forgot to mention those. These are the same eyeball powers which enable her to shoot lasers from her eyes in later scenes, just like the main antagonist in Mausoleum (reviewed here). The film even has one of the cops say to the granddaughter, “Come with me if you want to live.” So, yeah, like I said, the film is pretty up front about what it’s trying to rip off here for sure. 

And I loved every minute of it. This one is a comic romp that doesn’t seem to know it’s comical but, that’s okay, the silliness is infectious and I’d have to say that Lady Terminator is definitely the very definition of a ‘switch your brain off’ movie. In fact, I’d say if you did try to watch it while your brain was engaged, you might come away very confused. A solid recommendation from me though and, yeah, hoping those Blu Ray rights issues get cleared up at some point because I would love a high definition copy of this one. An absolute banger for an all nighter of a movie screening, that’s for sure. 

Breaking Glass

 

Through A Glass Darkly

Breaking Glass
UK 1980 Directed by Brian Gibson
Allied Stars Ltd
Fun City Editions Blu Ray Zone A

So here I am again, revisiting one the greatest and most powerful films about both the British music industry and the gradual erosion of the soul, in an edition put out by a relatively small boutique blu ray label from the USA. So the first question you have to ask is, why is an important British movie like Breaking Glass, which perhaps requires a fair amount of understanding or at least sympathy to the turbulent times in the country in which it was made, only available on a pretty small, US label? 

I don’t know the answer to that question, by the way but, big thanks to Fun City Editions who have wisely chosen to put out a nice transfer of the original British version of the film, rather than the version which came out and was truncated by ten minutes in the American cut, in an exercise in making the film a bit lighter and more palatable to the audience, rather than allowing the bleak heart of the movie and the heart rending ending (completely cut from the US version) to shine through and remind people of the true, haunting power of the motion picture industry when all the elements come together so nicely.

Hazel O’ Connor was a bit of a pop star for a while in the UK when this film came out, which also includes the songs she wrote for the movie (many of which climbed the UK pop charts at the time) and... I dunno, I thought she’d disappeared after this high point in her career but, visiting her website recently, I realise she’s still going, still releasing records and doing gigs and... yeah, I need to catch up with what she’s been up to lately, it seems to me. 

The film is an absolute belter of a movie (much like the accompanying song-track album) and stars Hazel as Kate, a political activist style songwriter who doesn’t want a commercial music career and is kind of content (sort of... not really, it’s complicated) being the angry young woman artist playing pubs for not very much money. Then along comes Danny, played by Phil Daniels, fresh from his lead role in the movie version of The Who’s rock concept album Quadrophenia, who makes his mind up to manage her band... after he’s convinced her... helping her build the group (including a stand out performance from a very young, bearded, Jonathan Pryce as their half deaf saxaphone player), get gigs and break into the music business. A kind of negotiation of the ‘sell your soul and sign on the dotted line’ Faustian agreement where they come into contact with music promoters played by the likes of Mark Wing-Davey (yes, that’s the original Ford Prefect on radio and TV, to all of you brilliant The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fans) and a record producer played by Jon Finch (Jerry Cornelius himself, ladies and gentlemen). 

As you would expect... the group starts slowly falling to pieces and there’s some harsh imagery punctuated by occasional beautiful moments. Moments captured by some incredible shot designs, such as when Jonathan Pryce is being auditioned in Kate’s flat. The camera starts in close up on Pryce working his sax and then pans out to the accompanying Kate on her mini keyboard (and her positive reaction), before pulling out again to Danny in the foreground as he obviously thinks the same. And the cinematography in this film, by Stephen Goldblatt, is perhaps under sung and not lionised as much as it should be... because for a film with such a gritty subject matter and music which really hits hard, it looks absolutely amazing all of the time. 

And that song-track is indeed hard hitting and quite addictive, as I’m sure anyone who owns the Breaking Glass record album and subsequent format incarnations of it will attest. The lyrics are haunting and feel like a punch to the gut (or the arse... but not nose... yeah, watch the film) and make for beautiful earworms all the way through. And of course includes such hits such as the saxaphone heavy Will You? and the apocalyptic Eighth Day, performed near the end of the picture (or at the end if you watch the vastly inferior American cut, thankfully not on this Blu Ray in that form) which has an absolutely iconic look to the costumes and lighting at the concert, taking place at the old Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park (sadly deceased although, I remember seeing a memorable stage version of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy there in the late 1970s). 

The real stars of the show, though, are Phil Daniels and Hazel O’ Connor. Daniels is quite charming and likeable in his role. And O’ Connor. Well, anyone doubting her acting credentials needs to see this film, for sure. It’s a subtle and evocative performance which, honestly, should have got her an Oscar, or something, if the film had been taken more seriously Stateside. Ironically, one of her most amazing moments in the film, where she slowly breaks down while trying to sing a recording of her chart hit Will You?, was cut from the old US version. All I can say to the people behind the truncated version is... that’s called vandalism guys!

And there you have it, a little label in the US of A called Fun City Editions puts out one of the most dynamic and essential movies about the British music industry and, also, one of the most entertaining and formidable, it has to be said. If you’ve not seen Breaking Glass before then I’d urge you to grab the Region A edition from America (make sure your player can handle US discs first, people!), as it’s the only game in town as far as a high quality transfer of the movie in its original 2:35.1 aspect ratio is concerned. At least at the moment. I was tapping my toes all the way through this one and had an absolute blast. This film... and the lead actors... just don’t get enough love, if you ask me. 

Sea Change

A Hasty Return

Sea Change
USA 2007 Directed by Robert Harmon 
Sony Pictures TV Blu Ray Zone 1

Warning: Many spoilers in this one.

Sea Change is the fourth of the Jesse Stone movies and, I have to say, it’s my least favourite in this nine movie box set so far. Not that it isn’t good... just not the best, I reckon. It’s also something of a transition episode in terms of the regular characters. Tom Selleck, of course, once again plays Jesse Stone, impeccably... but Viola Davis returns as Molly Crane for only one scene. When a lonely Jesse phones her in the middle of the night to ask how her pregnancy is going. So, his new police support person, is Kathy Baker as Rose Gamon. 

In this one, Jesse’s ex-wife puts a halt on their nightly phone calls as she is seeing someone else. So Stone slip slides back into alcoholism but, as his new psychiatrist (William Devane returning as Dr. Dix) tells him, he needs to keep busy if he wants to keep the drink away. Be that as it may, Paradise, Massachusets is a small town where not much crime has been happening of late. However, there is a reported rape by a young victim of an incident which took place on board one of the yachts on the annual Paradise boat race, which he half heartedly gives to Rose, partially to help get her back into field work but also because, he’s not sure he believes the girl. This subplot also involves the great Sean Young (from Blade Runner, reviewed here) as a boat race pleasure seeker. 

Meanwhile, he sees that there are three unsolved cases and so he takes the most important one, from some time in the 1990s, involving a huge bank robbery, which he goes at relentlessly. He goes to visit Hasty Hathaway (played by Saul Rubinek) who you may remember is in jail after the events of Stone’s first week or two on the job (and who hired Stone for the job of police chief in Paradise in the first place), as he realises his money laundering was probably involved in the robbery, as he ran the bank. 

About this time, Suitcase (played by Kohl Sudduth) finally wakes up from his coma after being shot in the head after the events of the previous movie in the series, Death In Paradise (reviewed here). But he’s a little different. He has no memory of being in hospital but he seems to have retained everything people told him or read to him while he was in his coma. He’s also suddenly found what Jesse once told him is ‘cop-ly intuition’ and, even though he’s not quite on active duty just yet, he works out what is really going on with the bank robbery case and gives Jesse the obvious lead he’s been missing. 

Of that, I have to say I figured out who did the bank job and just what had gone on way before anybody in the movie did. I just suspected it at first but when Jesse becomes romantically involved in one of the people who at first doesn’t appear to be that close to the case, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. So that’s a shame because I’d have preferred not to have known until the reveal. 

Now, the rape case is interesting in this one because... and you could never get away with this now in the ‘me too’ climate... but it hinges on consent and basically takes the tact that, in this particular case, the so called victim has been fabricating aspects of the incident for her own gain. I’m glad that somebody was smart enough to portray this because it’s not always good to believe what you see on the surface. 

Now, I was expecting, hoping, that Sea Change would be an episode where Jesse didn’t actually have to kill anybody. I mean, all the while he’s being intimidated by the brother of the killer who Hasty shot to frame him for the intended murder of Jesse in his first case. There seems to be a peaceful resolution to this story but, just when you don’t expect it (so that’s good at least) the killer turns up in Stone’s home and nearly ends Jesse... who promptly puts a few bullets in him and, once again, adds to his phenomenal ‘small town’ body count. I’m wondering if we’ll get an episode where someone doesn’t have to die for a change but, hey, I’ve still got another five of these to watch and, yeah, although this one was a little disappointing, I’m still really enjoying them and look forward to what Jesse gets up to next.